Thursday, 13 May 2010

Perfectionist

I have an ironing board full of glass pieces, many of which I have made and won't sell. Dragons with wings that are too skew, bad cases of Nipple Eye (nasty disease affecting lampworked dragons and related to Sunken Eye), odd phoenixes and strange-coloured elephants. Often people come and coo over them and often I'm told I'm too fussy and should be putting some of them up for sale.Many years ago, I studied metallurgy at university. It was a four year course, the last year of which was spent doing a dissertation - helping with a project and writing up the results. From the many interesting projects on offer, I chose that which had as little to do with metallurgy as possible and so ended up in the Department of Archaeological Metallurgy (total population: 2), studying a find of iron age objects including some gold jewellery. It was an interesting year, but the work I produced at the end of it could hardly be said to have been excellent. Looking back at it a couple of years later, I felt that I could have done a much better job had my mind been better focussed on the task in hand and less on social life and other things.Imagine my feelings then to discover that this "important work" is now likely to be incorporated into a British Museum publication and that a Time Team programme may be in the offing. I should be excited, but instead find myself more than a bit embarrassed!This is a very good reason for all those 'substandard' pieces to continue to reside on my ironing board, one day maybe to move to a windowsill or displayed on a wall outside. We will continue to live with unironed shirts and I will be happy in the knowledge that I won't wake up one day to find my 'very important dragons with nipple eyes' in the British Museum.